Endosymbiosis

8. Reuptake

"Why do you collectors live here?" I asked the centipede as we walked toward something, trying to keep my voice steady. "Wouldn't it be better to live on some planet? Where you could get... Jobs?"

The creature squeaked, perhaps finding me irritating... Or stupid. Still, he did me the courtesy of replying:

"In our worlds there is only slavery. Each and every grain we plant is to feed the Aulic's soldiers... Each metallic nugget we pluck from the ground is to strengthen their armor... Each of our children is to increase their numbers. Why would we give our blood if they would use it just to grow stronger?"

"Maybe the Aulics need these soldiers..." I stammered. "Maybe they're fighting an important war."

"Whatever war it is, it's not ours."

I followed the creature to a cave in one of the rubbish mountains supported by metal beams, and I crossed a thin fabric curtain, tied with unusual care to separate what was hid there from the brutality outside. Behind the curtains, plunged into a darkness broken only by few lights, hundreds of makeshift stretchers were distributed, with beings laid down and tied up.

My feet stopped, but the centipede pushed me inside. I heard the creatures agonize, whispering and begging to be released as if the ties made them feverish. That was painfull to see even after I had been warned about that - I wasn't prepared to see it; I would never be.

One of the beings near the entrance had soft eyes and the low cry of an abandoned puppy, as if he had never felt he was enough to not be lonely... And I understood his pain as mine.

"The rebels passed through here a few noxdiems ago." The centipede being said, attracting my attention. "They killed some of us, took others, and the ones we didn't let them take became like this..." I looked at all of them.

"Why are they tied up?"

The centipede started to respond, but, before it could, the trapped closer creature muttered in the same language we talked, an ancient and corrupted one, so low I had to lean over to hear him:

"The Queen is calling me..." Queen... I wish I didn't know what he was talking about - Itopis was ruled by Aulics, not kings, after all - but I had read enough about the Queen to know I should fear her. "I need to reach her... Help me, please... Help me escape from the descendants of beasts..." His pupils dilated and his claws took my arm, which had come too close.

I tried to pull away, but when I faced the horrors and screams that exploded in the darkness of his eyes, calling me inside like a black hole, I froze. His emptiness was like glue to my attention and I could no longer hear anything but what was emerging from him, words digging paths from my ears to my mind: "The Gods of Andromeda are coming..." Gods... Nobody spoke about gods since the Empire abolished religions, on the grounds that they only prevented their faithful from understanding what death really was... But when this new belief came to explain it, it probaby became too hard for these creatures not to believe. "They will burn our bodies and our ashes will feed their lands... But those of us who become their children will be spared..."

Spared? From what?! Was that what I was thinking abo-

When the deafening sound of engines came to life outside, I broke free from the creature's influence, staggering backward as if waking up from a nightmare.

I ran out of the cave, and, when I pulled back the curtain, I was blinded by a light that I didn't know if it came from the sun or the stranger's ship. I blinked until my eyes adjusted to the brightness and noticed the vehicle take off and circle around the platform, causing chaos below among the collectors.

"You didn't come to help us, did you?" The centipede grunted at my back.

"No." I muttered. "But I will".

"Not everyone has the luxury to have hope, iatric... And I wouldn't put mine on a human."

Then he turned to the darkness of the cave and disappeared into it.

The stranger's ship descended in a dive to the platform, driving the collectors away with the power of its engines. I ran towards it, and, as I crossed the path, those beings exploded behind me. I could hear their teeth opening and snaping with me in the crosshairs, claws scraping the floor and threatening to pull me into the depths below the trash.

I tried to run even faster, but it didn't matter how hard I tried, because the beasts would always be faster. My muscles burned, sweat running down the valley of my spine, my heart beating so hard that I thought I'd never be able to get back to normal, and all I could see was the ship's door open with that hand held out to me.

When the beasts flew over me, my fingers wrapped around the stranger's and then he pulled me up to salvation... Or to demise.